Seeking Relationships In The Big Ten Passing Game

The object of this experiment was to look for highly correlated data within some of the regular season passing statistics. Data from all 144 regular season games within the Big Ten conference was collected from box scores and team sites. What is being sought is to confirm essentially some of the relationships that people notice with the so-called “eye test”, plus potentially find ones that are not so obvious.

METHOD:

A matrix of statistics was created using six variables – passing attempt, pass completions, total passing yards, yards per attempt, yards per completion and completion percentage. For purposes of this diary, interception data was not included, but is part of a future planned diary along this vein of discussion.

So, in all (n=144 for each variable), there were 864 individual values which were either reported or calculated from existing data. The assumption made was that 144 trials would be sufficient to show some interrelationships inside the data.

Fifteen potential relationships were examined and their r-value calculated.

...because forgetful (and, right now, cold-stricken) me did not realize until this morning that the conclusions, which I typed separately, were not in here. My fail really, but I choose to blame pseudoephedrine.

Long story short, the idea was to see, within the context of a season, if the relationships we can infer in the passing game exist statistically, and they do. More attempts correlate strongly to more completions, yards per attempt relate strongly to yards per completion (i.e., the greater one is, the greater the other tends to be typically), and more completions tend to mean more yards. Those obviously aren't new, but it is merely interesting to see them worked out this way.

Another one that shouldn't be new, although I am intrigued at the result, is the merely mild correlation between yards and yards per attempt, but when a team just isn't connecting on certainly plays or has a receiving corps that tended to disappear, like Iowa most games this year, that isn't shocking either.